


Cursed by the Love that I Receive

by the_divine_comedian



Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me by Your Name - André Aciman
Genre: Call me by your lesbian, Elia and Olive both count as Jewish names don’t worry I googled, F/F, F/M, I genderswapped call me by your name so you didn’t have to, Pining for days, Yes there ARE Peaches In This One Too, definitely smut, lesbian cmbyn (emotional) (NOT CLICKBAIT), references to English lit and opera because yes, sexual tension so thick it could be sliced by Olive’s god like jaw, slowburn baby, tender horny and feral in that order
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-26
Updated: 2019-07-26
Packaged: 2020-07-20 01:36:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19983904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_divine_comedian/pseuds/the_divine_comedian
Summary: “It makes me want to kill myself with Ophelia, I want to stand on stage with her and scream with her  and draw blood from my own arms…” I trailed off, wincing. “I don’t know why I said that.”Her lips parted like she wanted to respond, but her fingertips grazed my knee and I winced again, this time from pain and not regret. “Looks like you’ve already dawn some blood. How did that happen?”I was blushing like a drunk. “I… I don’t remember.” She was still touching my knee, but now she was caressing the underside of it. I wish I had been drunk.“I don’t remember,” Olive repeated, seeing through my lie. Which made me shiver to think she could look at me and reach right into the ugliest parts. Oh, Ophelia, give your dagger to me so I might carve my shame from my breast_________Ah yes, the lesbians deserve summer Italian sexual tension heartbreaking love stories too. Call Me By Your Name, but two stupid pining queer ladies. Yes, lots and lots of pining. Slow burn who.





	Cursed by the Love that I Receive

**Author's Note:**

> ‘È molto carina’ means ‘she is very pretty’
> 
> Please enjoy *blows a kiss*

> _"No: I know I should think well of myself; but that is not enough: if others don’t love me, I would rather die than live—I cannot bear to be solitary and hated, Helen.”_   
> 
> 
> __ ~ Jane Eyre  _ _

__________

It was a girl this time.

I mean, I knew she was going to be a girl. I’d known since December of last year, when my father was poring over dozens and dozens of candidates for our next summer houseguest, his annual live-in student. I’d nearly memorized the photograph that he held up to my mother that evening at the dinner table, while Mafalda rattled on about roasted lamb. She was practically spoon-feeding the meat into my frowning mouth, while managing to scold me at the same time, which had almost become part of our evening routine. Part of me still wonders if Mafalda was in fact my real mother, because my own never took to chastising me. Or perhaps I was one of the lucky ones and had nothing to rebel against or be chastised over. My mother was sipping her wine and winking at my situation. 

Father had said something about promising, top of the class, and witty. “ _ Sì _ ,” was my mother’s soft and tipsy reply. “Very promising.” Neither of them commented on the fact that she was a  _ she _ . Which, in my barely seventeen year old opinion, was probably the most important fact about her. Especially when her picture looked equally terrifying and unknowable. 

And there she was, standing in the foyer, straw hat and billowy blue shirt slipping off her sun kissed shoulder. It was eerie seeing her now, real, tangible, like seeing the legitimate Mona Lisa for the first time, both less and more impressive than a small printed photo you’d seen months ago. I realized that she was in fact staring at me and probably had been for sometime. This made me blush, partially because I felt stupid for not having realized she was waiting, but because she had been waiting for _me_ to initiate the conversation. 

“Hope your trip was good,” I said. Stupidly. She doesn’t want to talk to you.  _ Stupida _ . 

To my utter and complete horror, she smiled, a polite, closed lipped adult smile that meant  _ oh, poor little child, can’t even talk. _

“It was, yeah. Is your dad home?”

The side of my ankle tingled and I scratched it with my toenail, balancing on one foot for a moment. “No, he’s just gone into B., but he’ll be back soon. My mother–“ 

She wasn’t paying attention anymore. “Great, thanks,” one flip flop crossed the threshold. 

“Wait–“ I hated how high my voice sounded, still sharp and young and everything her voice was not. “Don’t you want to see your room? I can take your bag for you.”

She seemed to look at my face for the first time, like someone who’d been trying to swat away a bothersome fly and was now realizing instead it was a wasp. “Yeah, that’d be great.” Great great great. 

The rucksack was handed to me, and it was a lot heavier than I had anticipated. I might have grunted, only for the shock, but I don’t remember now. 

I do remember the way she turned back around, all Golden sunlight from the strands of hair plastered to a glistening forehead, ocherous and wet, to the tawny skin of an arm that in the underpart turned almost pale peach, ripe to eat and lick and devour. 

“Later!” 

And she was gone. 

  
  
  
  


She wasn’t down at dinner. 

“She’s resting, _tesoro_ ,” my mother said, clicking her tongue at me. I must have been wearing my irritation on my face.

“She seemed fine this morning,” I grumbled, my finger wiping the condensation from the glass of water I otherwise hadn’t touched. Mafalda heckled me daily about my lack of interest in hydration. As if the headaches and nosebleeds didn’t do a good enough job. 

My parents shared a look. I snuck further down in my chair. “I don’t think...” began my father, gingerly. They started using that tone with me the day I turned thirteen; the slow and controlled, condescending-in-disguise tone. Maynard, our summer houseguest two years ago, had told me it was because I slipped into moods of complete stone vexation when something troubled me. This year’s summer houseguest did not trouble me. “I don’t think she meant to be rude, I’m sure it’s a very normal thing to say in New York.” 

_ She didn’t have to say it like that _ , I wanted to protest. She didn’t have to say it like she couldn’t care less about the feelings of others, care whether you took it rudely or not, care whether you minded or not, care whether or not she’d ever see you again. 

If you had asked me then, I would have said I didn’t know why I’d minded so terribly, why her abrupt, American _later_ had bothered me at all. 

If you asked me a few weeks from then, I’d have said it was because of her coldness in my own home. I deserved to be treated like her hostess, not some child you could hand a cookie to shut them up, even if I was seven years her junior. 

If you asked now, I’d say it simply took me off guard, and it made me feel younger and smaller than I already was. 

All three answers would be a lie. 

I still had not replied and my mother shattered our silence. “I think she seemed very smart, hm?” 

“Oh yes, very. We compared favorite authors. Elia– you’ll never believe this– she said she reads Milton.”

I risked a sip of the water and was disappointed to find it was no longer cold. Fucking July. “Everyone reads Milton.”

My mother laughed, more at me then with. “You’re such a snob- Mafalda, look at this, I’ve raised a snob.” But our cook was too busy raising an eyebrow at my plate of untouched food. 

“His poems or his political work?” 

“Both I think,” he puffed out a small, soft string of smoke. “Didn’t get the impression that she’s quite the poetry type, though.” 

“ _ È molto carina _ ,” Mafalda chimed in, eyes still fixated on me. 

“I hadn’t noticed,” I heard my voice say. 

  
  
  


It was customary that every summer I give up my bedroom for six weeks to our summer houseguest. It was only ever my bedroom for the summer and winter break, so it hardly felt like my room at all anyway, and I didn’t mind giving it up. So, for nearly two months of what I had nicknamed home invasion, I occupied my grandfather’s old room. He’d died long before I was even conceived, but my mother had insisted on naming her first born child after him. Unfortunately for her, I popped out small, pale, and very female, so a bit of name revising would have to do. I’m not sure the dead can be offended anyway. 

I slogged up the stairs, floorboards creaking the entire way. Shadows fell across my feet, so contrary to the soft light from the open window at the end of the hall. I let my hand touch the wall and travel beside me as I walked, caressing the cool plaster. It was always so hot, even inside, which I usually didn’t mind. But tonight I felt flushed and heavy, despite hardly eating at dinner. 

Her door, I noticed as I passed, was shut. 

For a moment I imagined myself trying the knob, to see if it was locked, to see if she’d mind my walking in. If she didn’t, I’d sit on my bed, which now was, albeit temporarily, her bed. I’d take a drag from the cigarette she’d be smoking, just to show her I wasn’t as babyish as I looked, and ask her about Milton. It would impress her. 

I cringed at myself and walked into the bathroom. Brushed teeth, washed face, impossible-to-brush mop of hair looking extra mopish. I bit the peeling skin from my lips, a bad habit, before remembering that chapstick did not only exist, but was in the top drawer. 

Tip-toeing in case she was asleep, I slipped inside my makeshift bedroom. It was only till I was nearly completely undressed that I remembered I’d left all my clothes in my old room. 

A balcony connected my grandfather’s old room to my own, each of them possessing tall french doors as access. Anxiety coursed through my veins. She was probably asleep. Would it be rude to wake her? Ruder to try and sneak inside without waking her? What if she were to wake up halfway through my sneaking? Would she feel violated?  _ Maybe _ , some twisted part of me thought,  _ she deserves it after this morning _ . 

_ Later! _

I slipped back into my shirt and shorts and opened the door to the balcony. The heat was beginning to dwindle as the sun sank further into the sea, which was visible from here if one was so inclined to stand on the stone railing and look slightly to the left. My friends teased me mercilessly for being too chicken to even try. 

I knocked before entering. 

She was very much awake. The lamp beside the bed lit the room in a soft, pinkish red light that spilled over the yellow sheets and dresser and piles of books. The light was touching her too, illuminating her like an aura. She was still wearing what she had been, minus the sandals and hat, the latter resting on the tip of the bottom right bedpost. She seemed to keep her hair longer than most girls my age, and it was parted down the middle and falling in waves down her front. Soft peachy knees were bent and caused her fleshy thighs to dimple. It took me a moment to register that she was reading.

“I just came to get some things,” I mumbled, trying my best not to look like a needy child.

She glanced up at me then, all loveliness and coldness, “Oh.” Was she blushing? “Oh- yeah, right. Thanks for letting me use your room, by the way.” 

I nodded finding something caught in my throat and turned to my wardrobe, not actually looking at what I was grabbing, just taking essentials of underwear, t-shirts, shorts. When I turned back around I noticed she was staring. Her expression was sharp and unreadable, full pink lips pressed into a line, almost as if she was biting the inside of her cheeks. My stomach felt heavy again and I narrowed my eyes at her before looking away. 

“So you like Brontë?” 

I snapped my eyes back to her. “What?” 

She guiltily held up the novel that had been resting on her thighs, and I recognized it instantly. “Ever read it before?” She hadn’t. Had I? A million times. Did I like it? 

“It might be my favorite book. I like  _ Wuthering Heights _ almost as much, but that’s Emily not Charlotte.” Somehow I felt embarrassed admitting that, and my mind shifted instantly to my minute old fantasy of bringing up Milton. 

She wrinkled her nose, “I’ve never been a fan of romance.” 

I scoffed, “It’s not a romance, it’s pain and obsession and pining.”

“So far it’s just been her pain. I like her voice, the way she writes. Jane is… an interesting person to be in the headspace of.” Her reply made me giddy. She was flipping through the first few pages, landing on a particular passage and began to read. I knew the quote by heart, because I had always found it so eerily myself. 

“Keep reading,” I said after a moment. 

“Out loud?” I nodded. She looked confused and regret and heaviness sucker punched my gut. 

She shifted, “I actually should be working. Tuesday I meet with the translator, a Signora Mitali- or something- and I’m not sure what I’m even going to say besides ‘Please translate my book correctly’”. 

I vaguely remembered my father mentioning her book, something on Greek philosophy and how it affects art, religion, and politics today, something I found maddeningly interesting but didn’t want to let on just yet. I wanted to impress her, but not look like a know- it-all, and I’d already made a fool of myself once, if not twice in one day. 

“Good luck, then.” 

“Later!”

Later Later Later Later Later. 

  
  



End file.
